Bristol Lab XXX (Triple Laughing Lab)

Formerly brewed at Bristol Brewing Company
Style: Scotch Ale
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA

(Bottle, #1635) Pours a cloudy amber with a moderate off-white head. Aroma of banana bread dough and sour fruit. Flavor of malt, cider, and lactic.

Lumpy has it right on this, not only from our bottle from other peoples’ ratings: I suspect either a quality control problem emerge that is unfortunately hitting this beer or there was some kind of a problem in the conceptualization of the recipe. Either way, it’s too bad because you’d like to see a good brewery have a good anniversary brew. In my case, I found an aroma like a banana pancake batter, sourdough bread, and a bit like cider, almost sour. Almost fruity, too, like a Flemish sour--which I liked. Bronze color. Becomes a bit better with warming and familiarity, giving raspberry, strawberry, and the warming finish of grape.

Bottle. Smells like a sourdough starter. Very tart and cidery. Sour in a bad bad way. Very chalky finish. This may of been good at one time, but it has either gone bad or is infected. This is either a beer gone bad or a perfectly brewed bad recipe.

Pretty red ruby. Head was bubbly and hung to the edge. Mild sweet nose. TART!!!!!!! I am so sorry, but I can not believe that tis beer is supposed to be this tart. A triple Scottish Ale- no tartness. This is definitely infected and I think a lot of the previous raters accepted a flaw that was not sipposed to be there.

Fully diminishing white head forms atop the amber-orange liquid. The latter immediately offers intense candi sugar affected cookieish and caramel flavors that are not really enhanced by the heavy fruity alcohol fumes. Rather phenolic yeastiness joins forces to accentuate the ethanol feel even more, but those yeast effects also have the more interesting characteristic of offering an apricot, woody and vinegary underlying taste. Light-medium bodied for a beer of this caliber, oily and thin, quite astringent and alcoholic with all that citric feature. Fantastic alcohol hiding job, but that’s not the point of brewing, is it?

750mL corked bottle with Eyedrinkale and Walt on 9/29/2005. Pours a rather lifeless, heavy, maroon-amber-chocolate brown colored beer. Watery, tan head is very quickly dissipating and though some legs travel down the glass, no lacing is left behind. Aroma of dirty yeast, borderline bacterial, but this only in the background. Up front there are blood oranges, spoiled/spoiling tangerines and oranges, soft but strong liquor and tons of prunes, raisins, caramel and buttercream. Flavor is very vinous, with more prunes, raisins and thick, sweet caramel. Notes of oranges and vanilla on the end, with a fair dose of alcohol apparency. The textrue wants to be thick and rich, but the lack of carbonation, and heavy liquid just gives it an uninspired, loose, unpleasant feel. Like others say, it could have a slight infection. The lack of carbonation and some dirty flavors are possible signs. Or it could just be that these guys were over their heads in brewing this high gravity of a beer. Oddly, I didn’t mind the beer that much, having notes reminiscent of English barleywines and old ales, which I really enjoy. If you can get past all of the buttercream, vinousness, syrupy sweet candied fruits and lack of carbonation, it’s passable, I guess. . .

Pour is dark amber with thin tan head...smell is tart with tangerine and alcohol...taste is sweet vegetal alcohol...blech...

Bottle (thx Cougar). Dark amber pour. Kinda fruity aroma with a load of alcohol. Sour, and more fuity, some orange some raisin, and some sweet caramel malts. I felt the alcohol was really upfront, but it is 14%. Will rerate if I get to sample again and it turns out the bottle was infected.